Three-Dimensional Formation Pattern Maneuver Transformation Control for Multiple AUVs

This paper focuses on solving the problem of formation pattern maneuvers transformation for the multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) formation system. The distributed three-dimensional affine formation maneuver control strategy is proposed to actuate a group AUVs to achieve the maneuvers, including rotation, scaling, shear, coplanarity, collineation, etc. Firstly, a novel distributed trajectory estimator is designed for each follower AUV to estimate its desired trajectory affinely localized by the leader AUVs. Then a continuous adaptive integral sliding mode controller is employed to fast and accurate track the desired trajectory acquired by the distributed trajectory estimator. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is verified by the high-fidelity simulations.